The Digital Television Transition and Public Safety Act of 2005 is a United States Congress legislation enacted on October 20, 2005. This act deals with the cessation of the broadcasting of analog television and the subsequent implementation of digital television. This transition took place on June 12, 2009, which had been scheduled for February 17, 2009. [1] [2]
The act was a part of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (S.1932), Title III. It also provided for an auction of the recovered frequencies, and for a sum of $7.3 billion to be transferred to the U.S. Treasury from the money received. [3]
Each American household was able to request up to two coupons worth $40 to facilitate the purchase of digital-analog converter boxes. [4] These requests for coupons could be submitted between the dates January 1, 2008 and March 31, 2009, inclusive. [5]
Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an innovative advancement and represented the first significant evolution in television technology since color television in the 1950s. Modern digital television is transmitted in high-definition television (HDTV) with greater resolution than analog TV. It typically uses a widescreen aspect ratio in contrast to the narrower format (4:3) of analog TV. It makes more economical use of scarce radio spectrum space; it can transmit up to seven channels in the same bandwidth as a single analog channel, and provides many new features that analog television cannot. A transition from analog to digital broadcasting began around 2000. Different digital television broadcasting standards have been adopted in different parts of the world; below are the more widely used standards:
Digital terrestrial television is a technology for terrestrial television, in which television stations broadcast television content in a digital format. Digital terrestrial television is a major technological advancement over analog television, and has largely replaced analog television broadcasting, which was previously in common use since the middle of the 20th century.
The All-Channel Receiver Act of 1962 (ACRA), commonly known as the All-Channels Act, was passed by the United States Congress in 1961, to allow the Federal Communications Commission to require that all television set manufacturers must include UHF tuners, so that new UHF-band TV stations could be received by the public. This was a problem at the time since most affiliated stations of the Big Three television networks were well-established on VHF, while many local-only stations on UHF were struggling for survival.
Alabama Public Television (APT) is a state network of PBS member television stations serving the U.S. state of Alabama. It is operated by the Alabama Educational Television Commission (AETC), an agency of the Alabama state government which holds the licenses for all of the PBS member stations licensed in the state. The broadcast signals of the nine stations cover almost all of the state, as well as parts of Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee. The network produces public affairs, cultural, natural history, and documentary programming; broadcast and online education programs for classroom use and teacher professional development; and electronic field trips serving K-12 students.
Rocky Mountain PBS is a network of PBS member television stations serving the U.S. state of Colorado. Headquartered in Denver, it is operated by Rocky Mountain Public Media, Inc., a non-profit organization which holds the licenses for most of the PBS member stations licensed in the state, with the exception of KBDI-TV in Broomfield, which serves as the Denver market's secondary PBS station through the network's Program Differentiation Plan. The network comprises five full-power stations—flagship station KRMA-TV in Denver and satellites KTSC in Pueblo, KRMJ in Grand Junction, KRMU in Durango and KRMZ in Steamboat Springs. The broadcast signals of the five full-power stations and 60 translators cover almost all of the state, as well as parts of Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska and New Mexico.
KPPX-TV is a television station licensed to Tolleson, Arizona, United States, serving the Phoenix area as an affiliate of Ion Television. The station is owned by Inyo Broadcast Holdings, and maintains offices on Camelback Road on the northeast side of Phoenix; its transmitter is located atop South Mountain on the city's south side.
The United States The Digital Transition Content Security Act was a bill introduced by House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Wisconsin Republican, on December 16, 2005. The bill was backed by Democratic Rep. John Conyers.
An ATSCtuner, often called an ATSC receiver or HDTV tuner, is a type of television tuner that allows reception of digital television (DTV) television channels that use ATSC standards, as transmitted by television stations in North America and South Korea. Such tuners are usually integrated into a television set, VCR, digital video recorder (DVR), or set-top box which provides audio/video output connectors of various types.
The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 is a United States Act of Congress concerning the federal budget that became law in 2006.
Mississippi Public Broadcasting (MPB) is the public broadcasting network serving the U.S. state of Mississippi. It is owned by the Mississippi Authority for Educational Television (MAET), an agency of the state government that holds the licenses for all of the PBS and NPR member stations in the state. MPB's headquarters is located on Ridgewood Road in northeast Jackson. The public broadcaster was established as Mississippi Educational Television.
WOST is a television station licensed to Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, affiliated with ShopHQ. Owned by HC2 Holdings, the station maintains studios in Puerta del Condado in San Juan, with additional studios in Yauco. The transmitter is situated in Monte del Estado in Maricao.
WXXI-TV is a PBS member television station in Rochester, New York, United States. It is owned by the WXXI Public Broadcasting Council alongside NPR members WXXI, WXXI-FM (105.9), and WXXO. The three outlets share studios at 280 State Street near downtown Rochester; WXXI-TV's transmitter is located on Pinnacle Hill on the border between Rochester and Brighton.
A digital television adapter (DTA), commonly known as a converter box or decoder box, is a television tuner that receives a digital television (DTV) transmission, and converts the digital signal into an analog signal that can be received and displayed on an analog television set. Some also have an HDMI output since some TVs with HDMI do not have a digital tuner. The input digital signal may be over-the-air terrestrial television signals received by a television antenna, or signals from a digital cable system. It normally does not refer to satellite TV, which has always required a set-top box either to operate the big satellite dish, or to be the integrated receiver/decoder (IRD) in the case of direct-broadcast satellites (DBS).
A coupon-eligible converter box (CECB) was a digital television adapter that met eligibility specifications for subsidy "coupons" from the United States government. The subsidy program was enacted to provide terrestrial television viewers with an affordable way to continue receiving free digital terrestrial television services after the nation's television service transitioned to digital transmission and analog transmissions ceased. The specification was developed by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), with input from the broadcast and consumer electronics industries as well as public interest groups.
Digital television in the United States is available via digital terrestrial television (DTT), digital cable, satellite television, and IPTV providers.
Analog passthrough is a feature found on some digital-to-analog television converter boxes. Boxes without the analog passthrough feature only allow older, analog-only TVs to view digital TV. Those with analog pass-through allow both digital and analog television to be viewed on older TVs.
The digital television transition in the United States was the switchover from analog to exclusively digital broadcasting of terrestrial television programming. Under the Digital Transition and Public Safety Act of 2005, full-power broadcasting of analog television in the United States was initially planned to have ceased after February 17, 2009, but this was delayed to June 12, 2009, after the passage of the DTV Delay Act on February 4, 2009. This date was a further delay from the original date of December 31, 2006, as stipulated in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The delay to June 12 was to assist households on a waiting list for coupons for digital converter boxes, funding for which was provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
The Short-term Analog Flash and Emergency Readiness Act, or SAFER Act, is a U.S. law that required the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to allow the continuation of full-power analog TV transmissions in 2009 for an additional 30 days for the purpose of broadcasting public service announcements regarding the DTV transition in the United States and emergency information. It is also commonly known as the "DTV nightlight bill" or "analog nightlight", referring to a small nightlight that is left on after all of the other lights are out. Despite the analog shutoff deadline being extended to June 12, 2009 as part of the DTV Delay Act, stations that signed off before the deadline were still permitted to participate in the SAFER Act.
Smoky Hills PBS is a regional network of Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) member television stations serving central and western portions of the U.S. state of Kansas. It is operated by the Smoky Hills Public Television Corporation, a non-profit organization which holds the licenses for all of the stations licensed in the network. The broadcast signals of the four stations cover most of the western half of the state outside Wichita.
The digital television transition in Japan (アナログ放送終了) was the mandatory switchover from analog to digital terrestrial television broadcasting that began in 2008 and continued through early 2012. The switchover itself took place between 24 July 2011 and 31 March 2012, and involved television stations across all five major commercial networks, the entire network of NHK's broadcast transmitters, and television stations that are part of the JAITS group. Japan was the first country in eastern Asia to cease broadcasting television signals in analog.
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